Fraternity Of Evil
by Forgotten Nightmare
Summary: James White has started university and takes it upon himself to investigate the disappearance of a fellow student, unwittingly stumbling upon an ancient evil. Rated T for violence.
1. Chapter 1

The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of "reality". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as "pure evil".

I had never heard of the "Cult of Cthulhu" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!

The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.

"He's probably just been very busy lately," my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. "You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do."

"Isn't it a bit strange though?" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. "I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls."

"It isn't like him to miss a lecture," I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.

"If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening," he said cheerfully.

But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.

"I'm afraid he has left the university," she informed us. "He dropped out four days ago."

"Well there you go!" Jacob exclaimed. "Nothing to worry about!"

But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.

I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...


	2. Chapter 2

The following day dragged by without incident. I could not concentrate in the lectures and did not do any of the coursework I had been set for I was too highly anticipating the arrival of darkness and my investigation into the disappearance of Jonathan Mears.

When night finally came, I once again let myself into Jonathan's room. Looking around the place, I noticed the laptop on the desk and decided to check it. Finding nothing unusual, I started to go through his notebooks trying to find some clue as to where he had gone. It was in these notebooks that I had my first encounter with the demon known as "Cthulhu". In one of them was the image of a creature, the likes of which I had never before seen in my life. It was humanoid in its basic appearance but had claws on its hands and toes, large dragon-like wings and a bulbous head with tentacles not unlike an octopus. It was neatly coloured in green and beneath the drawing was written the words "CTHULHU CULT".

My initial thoughts on this were that the image was simply a figment of Jonathan's imagination. But however much I tried to dismiss it and look elsewhere, something about the creature depicted on the page forced me to continue looking. It was the eyes of the monster that most entranced me. I felt myself becoming hypnotised as the thing, whatever it was, drew me into the page with its penetrating stare. Those eyes, they seemed so alive, so real…

Suddenly, I dropped the book and leapt backwards in fright, only barely managing to stifle a scream. I was certain that the image had moved, though my rational mind told me that the notion was ludicrous. The tentacles around the figure's head had seemed to extend out of the page towards my face. However, I tricked myself into believing that I was only seeing things as a result of tiredness.

I had only just comforted myself with this idea when I heard hushed voices from outside the door. I recognised them instantly as Jacob and Annie. I kept quiet, but darted under the bed when I realised to my horror that they were entering the room. If they had something to do with Jonathan's disappearance, the last thing I wanted was for them to see me poking around in here. My fears about their involvement in this were soon confirmed when Jacob bent down and picked up the notebook I'd dropped on the floor.

"Someone's been here," he stated in an angry tone of voice I'd never heard him use before and with that, the pair left the room. I clambered out from under the bed to find that all the notebooks and a number of the books from the shelf were missing. I could only guess that that was the reason Jacob and Annie were here in the first place. Although what they wanted them for was a mystery.

And then I did the one thing I know now I should never have done. I decided to follow Jacob and Annie. I could only make out their silhouettes in the darkness when I left my Hall and followed them across the campus. I managed to get quite close, but remained far enough away so that they didn't sense my presence. Then all of a sudden, they turned off the road and headed towards a nearby wood. As we ventured further into the wood, I began to see a dim red glow and hear chants, screams and the banging of drums. When I finally came in sight of the source of the noise, I became frozen in terror.

There was a ring of fire surrounding a tall obelisk, upon which sat a statue of the image I had seen in Jonathan's notebook. The eyes of the statue emitted a bright red glow and it seemed to be moving to the beat of the drums in the firelight. A few dozen people danced maniacally around the fire and there, chained to the obelisk, was Jonathan. Or what was left of him anyway. His decapitated form was upside down, his chest split open. His ribcage had been cleaved in half lengthways and adorned the obelisk near the top. At the base of the obelisk was a small pile of blood, bones and organs, and it seemed as though the intestines had been split into many parts which the cultists were wearing as belts. Jonathan's head was nowhere to be seen. And his was not the only corpse there. The glade was filled with corpses hanging from the trees and offal covered the floor. The whole place stunk of a slaughterhouse and, unable to contain it any longer, I screamed. Immediately, a few of the cultists, including Jacob and Annie, turned in my direction and glared at me with pure hate. I turned and ran, ran as fast I possibly could away from that degenerate ritual.


	3. Chapter 3

I didn't stop running until I had burst into my room, locked the door behind me and placed a chair under the handle. Then I immediately vomited into the bin before collapsing onto my bed in floods of tears. I couldn't quite believe what I had seen that evening; it was too terrible to comprehend. But worse was to come.

Although I so desperately wanted to sleep, I forced myself not to. Instead I sat shivering with fear in the corner of the room, expecting Jacob and Annie to attempt to enter the room any second. I had to get out of here, I had to go to the police, I had to do something. And I had to stay awake. I had to...

And then I was no longer in my room. In contrast, I was standing amidst vast structures of black stone. On each stone was etched hieroglyphics of the kind I had never before seen and they were all covered in a sticky green goo. These stones seemed to go on for miles, their geometry extremely strange and disturbing. I must be dreaming, I told myself, this can't be real. Yet even in this knowledge, the sheer terror of the place engulfed me. I began to walk slowly around the structures, being careful not to touch the slime on their surface and desperately trying to wake up. And then I saw it, the monster of the notebook and the diabolical ritual. But this time, it wasn't a picture or statue but an enormous living monstrosity. I was rooted to the ground in fear as I stared at its huge form that seemed to tower for miles above me, its green, scaly skin, its thick leathery wings and its octopus-like tentacles, and from out of the air I heard the disembodied chant, "Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!" I was still unable to run and the tentacles of the monster began to rap themselves around me, all the while that demonic chant getting louder and louder until it felt like my head was being crushed. I was raised off the ground and brought up to the monster's head. It looked at me with one of its evil red eyes the fear became too much. I began to scream hysterically, writhing around in the grip of the beast. And then I awoke, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. I was lying on the floor and just remained there for a while, staring into the darkness and reminiscing on the terrors of the dream and the ritual I had seen, and remembering that chant: "Cthulhu Fhtagn!" What did it all mean?

The following day, I did not attend lectures and only left the room once to grab some food. As fate would have it, during this brief moment out of solitude, I met the person I didn't want to see ever again, Jacob. I avoided his gaze as he looked at me enquiringly.

"We missed you in lectures today," he said curiously. I didn't answer. I was sure he had seen me last night. "Where were you?" Jacob asked. Again, I was silent. He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Is something wrong, James?" It was then that I looked into his eyes but instead of the evil I had expected to see, all I could make out was concern.

"No," I muttered in reply.

"Something is wrong," Jacob disagreed. "What's up?" Either he's a very good actor, or he's entirely genuine, I thought to myself. And if was being genuine, that must mean that either he didn't remember the ritual I had seen him participating in or that I had only been dreaming. I prayed it was the latter.

"I'm ok," I said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. "I'm just feeling a little unwell, that's all."

"Well look after yourself," he replied without a trace of ingenuity. I quickly made myself a ham sandwich and once again locked myself into my room. The thoughts that raced around inside my head were endless as I casually bit into the sandwich. Almost immediately, I spat the contents out of my mouth, screamed and vomited onto the floor. What was inside the sandwich was not the ham I had put in but a vile mixture of the green goo I had seen in my "dream" and human blood. The room started spinning around me, turning into a dark green, and images of the tentacled creature I had seen so much of lately started appearing in every corner. I covered my ears and screamed uncontrollably.

And then Jacob and Annie were in front of me. I had no idea where they had come from for I had locked the door. But I was anywhere but the comfort of my room. Instead, I was in some sort of other realm, my room rapidly beginning to fade.

"You shouldn't have got involved in this," Jacob whispered menacingly.

"Now you must pay." Annie cooed.

"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." they said in unison. And then I saw no more.


	4. Chapter 4

Darkness.

I didn't know who I was or where I was. All I could tell was that I was falling lower and lower into a deep oblivion of blackness.

Though I was unafraid.

Was I dead?

It didn't matter.

In that place, nothing mattered.

I was at peace.

And then I was jerked roughly back into reality, though reality had become so distorted in my mind that I could scarcely tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. The first thing that I became aware of was a searing pain across my abdomen. I tried to scream, but my throat was sore as though I had been screaming for hours already. I attempted to move my arms but they were locked in place and I realised to my horror that the pain was from ropes that had been tied around me so tightly that they were literally cutting into my flesh. I spluttered for a moment as the sights and sounds of the world started to come back to me. I was tied upside down to the obelisk in the centre of the ritual space I had seen the previous night and my worst fears were realised.

I was covered in blood, though whether it was my own or that of another unfortunate victim I couldn't tell. A fire surrounded me and on the other side of the flames, people in black robes were dancing wildly making noises that sounded neither human nor beastly. I began to wonder why I was still alive and why I had not been dismembered like Jonathan.

Then one of the participants stepped through the flames, emerging unharmed beside me. He brandished a long silver knife and screamed "Cthulhu Fhtagn!" at the heavens. The figure turned down to look at me. It was Jacob, though it wasn't Jacob's eyes that looked at me, rather an empty, soulless shell of a human being. He raised the knife and I began to pray silently, expecting the end. Though it wasn't me he plunged the knife into, it was himself. He rammed the blade up to the hilt into his stomach and violently jerked it upwards, sending gory sprays of arterial blood all over my face and into my mouth and nose. Jacob then reached into his chest and began to pull out his internal organs, laughing maniacally as he did so. It was then that I found my voice and screamed louder than I had ever done, though my cries were drowned out by the diabolical beat of the drums and the bestial chants of the other cultists.

Jacob did not fall to the ground as anyone else would have done. Instead, he cracked open his ribcage, revealing his empty chest cavity. An unseen force then ripped his head back, nearly severing it, his spine bent backwards and cracked and then his limbs began bending into odd angles as well. All the while, he continued in his demonic laughter, the chants of the cultists and the beat of the drums growing and growing. He contorted spasmodically, and shadowy tendrils sprung out of his body, twisting as they reached up to the sky. Suddenly, Jacob's body exploded in a shower of blood and offal although his ghoulish laugh seemed to continue somehow, and out of nowhere appeared many small winged creatures. They were less than three feet in height and completely black. No detail of their bodies was visible save for a pair of glowing green eyes. They swooped around the obelisk to which I was tied, uttering a shrieking sound unlike anything I had ever heard. As they shrieked, the dancing, chanting and beating of the drums got louder and wilder until, at its climax, the ground itself started rumbling. Cracks started to appear in the ground and water started gushing out causing the obelisk to crumble, but the fire burned ever brighter.

Due to the destruction of the obelisk, the bonds that were around my middle loosened slightly. But as I tried to rise, I was violently pushed down into the water by one of the cultists who cried,

"Mighty Cthulhu! Accept our sacrifice of blood and rise again!" With that he drew a knife of his own, but before he was able to end my existence, one of the shadowy winged creatures flew into his chest, disappearing in an instant. Suddenly, the cultists' eyes literally burst into flames and he began reciting the chant I had heard so many times: "Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!" His mouth then opened wide and I could hear his jaw bone break. Long teeth extended from the gums and before I could react, he lurched forward sinking them into my forearm.

This new pain was just what I needed. I screamed in agony and ripped free. Quickly loosening the bonds around me, I leapt through the fire. Its searing heat scorched me and I felt as though a thousand knives were simultaneously being plunged into my skin. I looked desperately around for an opening to escape and noticed that all the cultists now had flaming eyes and were running at me screaming even as their heads burned in the flames from their eyes. I turned and fled, not caring about the pain in my arm or the fire that was rapidly consuming me. Not caring about the thorns and branches that eviscerated me as I ran past them. I knew I just needed to get as far away as possible.

Although the screams of the ritual participants had begun to fade, I did not slow down. I just kept going and did not look back.


	5. Chapter 5

That is the end of the story, dear readers. Believe me or not, I don't care. I ran far away from the university that evening and, to this day, I have never returned. I had to have my arm amputated after that and my burned and mangled body remains as testament to the evil I have encountered. I told the authorities it was a college fire. What else could I say?

I cannot sleep well anymore. Every night I lie awake, shaking in fear in the knowledge of what exists beyond the limited scope of what we call "reality". What is reality? I don't know. All I do know is that this world contains more evil than can ever be imagined.

The evil of the Cult of Cthulhu is still out there and I know that my days are numbered. I have seen too much. One day they will come for me and, when they do, I will let them take me. I have tried to end my life a number of times and now reside in an asylum as a result. Death will come as a relief for me.

It has taken me a great deal of effort to write this, since every fibre of my being has tried to block out the memories of what happened at that university. But I need you to know. I need you to be prepared. The Cult of Cthulhu is alive and well and, one day, Cthulhu will rise and destroy this planet. It is only a matter of time.


End file.
